The Best Non-Textbook Math Books

Too bad most of our "math reading" is with dry, unfriendly textbooks in school. It turns out there are
lots of extremely well-written math books (not textbooks) that are addictive and fascinating reads.

They usually cover the more personal side of math, including the solution or history of famous math problems, the lives of mathematicians, their struggles, their genius, and the math they created.

Plenty of these readable math books also cover slightly more technical topics and are a great gentle introduction before hitting the serious, less-friendly books.

Mysteriously pulls off being lucid and technical at the same time. Each article is by an eminent mathematician in that field. Everyone from high schoolers to professional mathematicians get a lot out of this book. Google for lots of free PDF excerpts.

The Einstein Theory of Relativity

Illustrated, in verse. Learn tensors, coordinate maps, special and general relativity.

Advice for how to solve problems in a very general but very practical sense.

Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality

In Love and Math, renowned mathematician Edward Frenkel reveals a side of math we’ve never seen, suffused with all the beauty and elegance of a work of art. In this heartfelt and passionate book, Frenkel shows that mathematics, far from occupying a specialist niche, goes to the heart of all matter, uniting us across cultures, time, and space. --From Amazon.com

"It's like teaching an art class where they only tell you how to paint a fence but they never show you Picasso," he says of elementary school math classes. "People say, 'I'm bad at math,' but what they're really saying is 'I was bad at painting the fence.' " --Frenkel

The Last Problem

A look at Fermat's Last Theorem, but written before the problem was solved. By an extremely influential math author of yesteryear.